to cast out any fear
by zaluzianskya
Summary: After spending so long in the afterlife, you can't imagine what use the living world could ever have for you. (Jake diamonds Jadesprite)


Originally written for Ciri as part of the Homestuck Valentines Exchange.

* * *

Dying was scary and it hurt, but now everything is okay because you've made friends. John and Dave are here, their eyes as blank and white as yours. They aren't the _same_ John and Dave — the scorch marks John sometimes wears are gross, and so is the blood around Dave's neck — and you really wish you could see Rose also... but it's okay nonetheless.

You have other friends now too. The trolls who bothered you and your friends online had seemed like total jerks at the time, but in person they're...

...well, a lot of them are still total jerks. But they grow on you over time!

And time is just about all you've got out here. Lots and lots and lots of time.

It's quiet, it's peaceful, as the years fly by and melt into decades and centuries. It feels like you've always lived out here in the bubbles. Your vague memories of another place and time become nothing more than a source from which you create dream landscapes, and even those become corrupted before long with visions of planets made of brains and glass and quartz.

It's all very familiar to you after the uncountable time you've spent in the afterlife, which is why it's such a surprise when, one day, you wander into an unfamiliar land of grass and stone pillars.

The sky is dark, but not stormy. You stare at it for a moment before forging onward. A new place to explore! This should be exciting. It's almost like an adventure, you think, and a distant memory bubbles up to the surface of your mind; the voice of a man telling you that one should _never_ pass up an opportunity for adventure.

"Halt!" The sudden voice, unfamiliar as the scenery surrounding you, echoes ominously.

You do halt, but you look around in suspicion. "Says who?" you call.

"Says _me_ , interloper!" And then you see him: Standing atop a set of stairs that lead up a hill. He's a boy a couple years older than you, with glasses, untamed black hair, and a _really_ ugly tattoo on his left shoulder. He's pointing a pair of pistols in your direction.

And his eyes aren't blank. So he's either dreaming, or he just doesn't know that he's dead yet.

"You can put the guns away." Normally someone facing down the end of a barrel would cower in fear, but you're Jade Harley. And furthermore, you're a ghost.

Surprisingly, he does. As he hops down the steps toward you he says, "Sorry about that. I mistook you for some new kind of monster. These planets are rife with the things! One never can be too cautious, you know." Once he's standing a few feet from you he does a double-take. "Do I know you?"

He _does_ look familiar. Actually, he looks and sounds a heck of a lot like John — but he looks familiar in a way completely different from that, too. "I don't know. I feel like I've met you before... I've been out here for a very long time, so maybe we do know each other! I'm Jade."

His eyes widen. "Well slather me in Thousand Island and toss my salad. Grandma?!"

"Oh my god, Jake?!"

You embrace and don't let go for a very long time.

* * *

He and his friends have entered the session, it turns out, and he's _not_ dead; just his dreamself is. He regales you with tales of growing up on an island filled with the monsters you've seen in your troll friends' areas of the bubbles you frequent, and with glowing reviews of his sessionmates. Jane is an amazing cook and a brilliant sleuth, he says, and Roxy is a beautiful techno-whiz, and Dirk... he gets flustered and babbles a lot when he gets to Dirk, which you have to laugh about.

"I already know you like boys, dummy," you inform him with a good-natured shove to his shoulder. Or you'd suspected, anyway, from some of the paraphernalia you've seen around your house. It's not just blue _ladies_.

Jake flushes and rubs at the back of his neck. "Dirk is just... gosh, I don't have the words. Can we move on?"

"Whatever you say," you laugh.

* * *

You don't see Jake often. Time is fickle; a year goes by for you and it's only a day later for him. But then you turn around for five seconds and he's suddenly a month older, wondering where you've been every night when he was dreaming. You're long since acclimated to the strangeness of it all, but he's new to it, so you _guess_ you have to be patient with him.

It's great having him around, though. More friends always make things better. You introduce him to some of the trolls; he hits it off pretty quickly with Rufioh, of all people. And life, or what passes for it these days, continues in much the same wonderful way it has for as long as you can remember.

There's a certain quiet insecurity about your grandpa/grandson/you don't even know which, that you didn't notice at first. He's gung-ho to the max about lots of things, but he talks up his friends' achievements more than his own, and the longer you spend around him the stranger his bravado seems.

Almost like it's some kind of ploy.

So you make a point of telling him how cool you think he is, and sharing stories of your grandfather's expeditions around the world (perhaps embellished, just a bit), and you hope he gets the picture, but from the unsurety in his voice and the hesitance in his step you're not entirely sure he does.

He's still really cool to _you_ , though.

* * *

And then you find yourself wrenched away, your eyes full of burning, your waking self is screaming at you to pull yourself together, and you know she's probably right. But you miss your friends and everything hurts.

You just want to die again.

* * *

It hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_.

Even when you sleep, the Green Sun blisters your eyes with its all-encompassing light. You'll never escape it.

The dream bubble you find yourself in is the same as it always was, but you don't feel comforted. It's the same but _not_ the same. You curl up on top of a quartz rock floating over a sea of lava and weep.

You don't know how much time has passed when something crashes to the ground. It takes you a few seconds to look up and see who's standing there.

When you see Jake, you hurriedly wipe streaks of green from your face. He's dressed differently from before — still in short, tight shorts, but this time he's wearing a black tanktop and a tie and the tattoo on his shoulder has been replaced with green scribbles and a sticker of that Geromy guy from Dave's webcomic.

"...Jade?" His question comes out in a rush of lost breath. He crouches beside you. "What in the dickens happened to you?"

You sniffle. You don't want to cry in front of him, but you can't help sobbing a bit. "I got prototyped. I–I can't stay here anymore. I have to leave when I wake up. I don't want to!"

That final sentence — more a wail than spoken words — echoes off the pyramids in the distance.

Jake is quiet. Great, now he probably thinks you're just a whiny crybaby too. Well, it's not like he wouldn't be right. You're a useless, sniveling piece of shit who never should have been revived. You don't know why Jade bothered.

"Shucks, buster," is all he says. And then he sits next to you, legs crossed, and reaches over to scritch one of your extra ears.

When you freeze up involuntarily, he pulls his hand away. "Er– was that not all right? I apologize, I've just never really had to deal with a situation like this one before. I'm sorry, Jade."

It wasn't really unpleasant. Bec's lingering consciousness, what little of it remains beyond his canine instincts, is actually disappointed that he'd stopped. "No, it's fine. I was just surprised."

With a little grin, he puts his hand back on your head and ruffles your hair. "I can't say I have any good advice for you, Jade, but hey! At least now you can help your friends out some more. I couldn't imagine not being able to be there with my pals as they fight their way through this blasted session."

"But it's not like I can do anything," you mumble. "I'm totally useless, Jake."

His hand stills in your hair and he lets out a breath. He doesn't answer for a minute or so. But that's okay; you know there is no answer, so you're all right just being here with him.

"I probably can't convince you to the contrary," Jake admits. "But I've always thought you were amazing. You were doing nuclear science at eleven, for frig's sake! I was always in awe when I read your letters, to be totally honest."

You shrug uselessly. That was then. This is now.

"And unless I missed my guess, you appear to be half-Becquerel now. All the stuff you told me about him — shit, Jade, I can't even imagine what you must be capable of now!"

"A big fat load of nothing." You sniffle and wipe your eyes again.

He scratches behind an ear. You still can't stop crying, but you relax a bit.

"I guess I can understand how that feels." His voice is quieter. Though you aren't looking up at him you can tell from the acoustics that he's looking out across the lava ocean as he talks. "Thinking you won't amount to much of anything? It's the pits, isn't it?"

You hum in agreement. Your tears slow, a bit.

"I've told you about my grandmother, haven't I?"

Your ears perk up. "I don't think so."

"What was I thinking? How irresponsible of me!" He tugs on your arm and you have to sit up and look at him. He's grinning like he usually does, but there's something marginally less enthused about it than you're used to. "Well, settle your floaty behind down, Jade, because this one's a doozy."

He tells you all about a brilliant scientist whose empire rivaled that of the trolls' feared empress, who never gave up even after she was exiled.

You'd like to believe that you could be her, but there's no way that could ever be true.

You wake, and the battlefield calls to you.

* * *

⁂

* * *

You kneel beside the crushed corpse of your grandmother/granddaughter/whichever she is. She should be waking up; dunderhead though you might be, you _do_ know the rules of this game and you know that Jade was no villain.

Why isn't she waking up?

It should be happening any second now. She'll stir, her fingers will twitch, her eyes will flutter open and she'll be miraculously free of the Batterwitch's compulsion. That's how it would go in any number of the movies you've memorized, so why...

Before you can finish wondering, a brilliant yellow glow surrounds her. It pulses, flashes blindingly, and when it dies down you can see her chest moving up and down.

Her fingers twitch.

Her eyes flutter open.

Her skin is the warm brown you remember from your childhood _(her wrinkled hands and her white hair and everything about her)_ and not the dark, cold grey it was before.

She stares up at you, brows furrowed in confusion at first, but then her face is filled with recognition. "Jake?"

"Welcome back, Jade." You get to your feet, feeling more than a little awkward in your bright yellow panties.

She follows suit, brushing dirt off of her dress. "What just happened? I feel like I had a really bad dream."

You reckon she may not recall all that went on, and truth be told you don't know all the details yourself, so all you can do is shrug.

Your eyes flick to her twitching dog ears and gently wagging tail. You'd very much like to ask her about those; this is Jade the player, not Jade the sprite, right? Not that you're well-versed in sprite mechanics beyond what that funny clown has rambled on about, but...

She catches your gaze, seems to realize what you're looking at, and tilts her head. "Oh! I merged with my sprite when I ascended. It was prototyped with Bec — you remember Bec, right? I told you all about him! Well, with him and with my dead dreamself." A look of distaste crosses her face for just a second.

There's a pang in your chest as you contemplate all the different things that expression could mean.

"So– you don't recall anything that she..." No, of course she doesn't. Why would she?

"That she what?" Jade frowns. And then her eyes light up and she covers her mouth. "Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry, Jake! I remember some bits and pieces and I probably could dig some more out if I tried, honest. I remember her being really good friends with you–"

"It's quite all right!" It's a relief to hear. You'd honestly love to hang around and chit-chat some more about what she does and doesn't remember, but your gaze turns upward to the bright red battleship looming overhead. You smile and tell her, "We can discuss it all later, Jade."

She looks up, too, and nods firmly. "Right."

She reaches out and grabs your hand. Fingers laced together, you prepare for the final curtain.


End file.
